Is Facebook Growth Slowing?

Is Facebook growth slowing?

No. At least not today, but that doesn’t mean it won’t sometime in the near future.

I read an article today in the New York Times that sparked somewhat of a mathematical inquest. In the article, it said that a recent study by the Department of commerce shows that 28% of Americans do not use the Internet.

This metric is interesting alone, but becomes incredibly interesting when put within context of Facebook.

There are now 152 million Americans using the Facebookplatform. According to the most recent US census, that figure represents nearly half (48.8%) of the projected 311 million people living in the United States. And, going back to the NYT article referenced above, it also represents 68% of Americans that use the Internet.

Wow. Those are incredible numbers for a platform that is barely 7 years old.

There are many reasons why Facebook has been able to sustain such tremendous growth over those 7 years, and those reasons are covered in a variety of blogs and articles throughout the web. But no one seems to say much about how the growth of Facebook will eventually slow.

Note: I’m looking at this from a US only perspective. The Worldwide perspective is likely much different.

Looking back a year or two, Facebook was able to sustain such heavy growth because of the sheer volume of Americans that weren’t yet involved with the platform.  In February 2009 there were “only” 46 million users in the United States. As such, there were over 250 million Americans yet to adopt the platform. In the last 24 months, however, Facebook has been adopted by 108 million Americans, an average of 4.5 million new users per month.

Clearly, this type of growth can’t sustain itself forever.  So, without using any complicated mathematical models, I wanted to project when Facebook will reach its peak in the United States. The model below is a linear projection, assuming current growth rates will sustain straight-line as adoption grows (which they won’t, but it still serves as a basis for evaluation).

February 2011: 153mm
March 2011: 157.8mm
April 2011: 162.6mm
May 2011: 167.4mm
June 2011: 172.2mm
July 2011: 177mm
August 2011: 181.8mm
September 2011: 186.6mm
October 2011: 191.4mm
November 2011: 196.2mm
December 2011: 201mm

Keep in mind that according to Internet usage rates, 100% Facebook adoption in the United States would be 224 million users. Therefore:

Facebook would hit 80% Adoption at 179.2mm users.
Facebook would hit 85% adoption at 190.4mm users.
And, Facebook would hit 90% adoption at 201.6mm users.

Personally, I think that once Facebook reaches 80% adoption, growth rates will slow significantly, and we’ll top out at 85% adoption, or 190 million users sometime in early 2012.

This slowing growth pattern has significant effect on the physical size of our networks, seeing as how there will be fewer “new” people to connect with in the future. More on that thought in my next post.

What do you think?